ANNALS OF ENTERTAINMENT
THE HUNTER. GAME5
For jòur wild days, University of Chicago students turn scavengers.
BY PATRICIA MARX
..,',:.'::'.'
.
r.
!
{1i"'\
,, >. .... .) . .... .....\
. . ..t(,...)
"'!I ,
. . . . ....:r
, ..."X . . . ; , ' , ;. . . .
. ' . . . : .
;::;:!
. : . :
\... . ,..,.:;.., ,: ,,' . '.. . =
. q 7 2
. . .þ,.;.:.
l
}i,
.
pi:>fé:.r .,.
.
.....:.p
.
t
.
. j l pr
.-
.
:< 1 ' " . I II .
.'.,-
'fS .
f
....
.,
,.
.' . .. ":
....'.
. -- ......
.:
it
""'11
2)0
p
. '
j:}f
'. . ...:::. <,,
Gj,;M
<'
&
'.t(
. . .- ..
. - "
. ,..vi.
':
'':--;''
'K
. _ 500
':.P
.
. -f"
-:".:-1.
-:- I
,.<<
:::'
.....Jþ:. .
:
.
. " 1 _'"' .. .. ..j::î.)
...:
;;
. ..'! . ... . ; . "
'.
cs"'6 :.
";;'
;:;
...."
",,/'-..1(' .... ....
- t ..:' .:' '#0
.:..:..... .':' p
-.:.
',:!.:
.' I.
gq
p
I
I
...
1ft..
i
_ a":,,
1II"f";:. IIIIIIIIIIIIIII "":
3'f
p
"
:,.,:'>'
4
.,
,,:
- --' . - - ---:--:----, ":;
?:
-,,:
. " - . - .".
.." ,:.._;. .-'
. ::: <: ...
:;...,"",,
j/':'
;;-:
i -.:......
.--.
' . '<.
:. ..' / ". '<-.'; . .
.:'i'
.
.t....j.
Þ ""ì '1):...: - >i"
::;:"
"We collectively effervesce, to use Durkheim's phrase as a verb," a Huntparticipant said.
I n the pre-dawn hours one Thursday in
May, a half-dozen University of Chi-
cago students who should have been
asleep were hovering around a piano in
the wood-panelled common room of
their dormitory. Theywere attempting to
adapt the instrument's innards so that
when the song "As Time Goes By' was
played certain keys would activate electri-
cal switches, which would, in turn, open
valves on the upside-down bottles of booze
affixed to the piano's cabinet, resulting, ul-
timately, in a Martini being streamed into
a cocktail glass. That night, or maybe it
was the following night (on no shut-eye,
Friday feels like Frursday), a nineteen-
year-old named Nathaniel Rossum was
putting the finishing touches on a Lego
contraption he intended to attach to his
26
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 2, 2012
computer keyboard which would enable a
dog to play Space Invaders. Meanwhile,
James Warner was doing his French
homework, but he planned, later in the
week, to get out of a pair of University of
Chicago Police Department handcuffs.
He had also volunteered to be covered in
glue, head to toe, naked.
These students, along with about a
hundred and twenty others, composed the
Burton-Judson team, this year's defend-
ing champion, in the annual University of
Chicago Scavenger Hunt. Scav, as it is
known on campus, is the college's Rose
Bowl: a mash-up of the Intel Science T al-
ent Search, fraternity hazing, a pep rally,
installation art, reality TV, and a 4- H fair.
It starts every year on a Wednesday in
May, at midnight, and ends four days
later, on Mother's Day Sunday, three
weeks before final exams. Most teams, like
B-J, are associated with a residence hall,
but anyone who likes decoding arcane
clues, fetching obscure objects, and con-
structing hard-to-build thingamajigs is
welcome to participate, and undergradu-
ates, graduate students, and alums all join
in. Last year, a law student from the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin constituted a team of
one, called Rural Juror. 'What those who
participate might not realize is how much
the administration loves Scav," said Elea-
nor Daugherty, the assistant vice-presi-
dent for student life, who, years ago, let
some students borrow her college degree
to transform it into a placemat. It was
eventually returned intact.
What sort of place is the University of
Chicago? This institution, set on two
hundred and fifteen acres in Hyde Park
and founded, in 1892, by the American
Baptist Education Society and John D.
Rockefeller, has been affiliated with an ex-
ceptional number of Nobel laureates (in-
cluding Saul Bellow, Enrico Fermi, and
Milton Friedman); the walls of its library
have been defaced with graffiti in hiero-
glyphics and various dead languages. In
the nineteen-seventies, its unofficial foot-
ball cheer was:
Cosine, secant, tangent, sine,
Three point one four one five nine
Square root, cube root, BTU,
Sequence, series, limits too. Rah.
This is a school where being a nerd is
something to brag about. "At other col-
leges," a student told me, "you'd say, 'I
didn't do any work. Look how cool I am.'
But here you'd say, 'I did all this work.
Look how cool I am.'" The college is fa-
mous for its student-designed T-shirts
lampooning the schoof s reputation. Some
examples: "If I wanted anA, I would have
H d " " B I .
gone to arvar, ecause got waIt-
listed at Hogwarts," and the popular
'Where fun comes to die." Of all the uni-
versity's traditions, Scav may be the best
exemplar of the campus culture. Benja-
min Heller, from the Snell-Hitchcock
team (a residence hall), told me, "I think
people gravitate toward ScavHunt be-
cause that weird thing that made us nerds
in high school is exactly what makes us
valuable here." The college's undergradu-
ate application has included essay prompts ð
h " F . d "" D ' . b (/)
suc as In x, on t wrIte a out re-
verse psychology," and 'What does Play-
Doh have to do with Plato?" The last